I’ve always used wooden toothpicks because

1. Common
2. Made from cheap soft wood: more likely to deform or destruct against metal than most plastics
3. Cut with the grain: especially soft to anything raking against the sides (like delicate pins)
4. The uneven “splintery” sides happen to be pretty good at snagging tiny fibers of lint to pull them out as one big ball, requiring fewer swipes

More techniques:

• clean with port facing straight down to get gravity assist
• blow across the opening of the port: mild negative pressure + agitation inside cavity vs blowing directly into port (which is generally warned against explicitly)
• focus on “pinning” lint up against each of the two corners and holding gentle pressure during extraction: these corners of the port have no exposed pins, and happen to be where lint tends to accumulate anyway