Much better than steel wool, but I would avoid them too. They are still abrasive.

The slight amount of rust you have can probably be removed with some oil or WD40 and a rag. If you ever need to remove rust that is worse than that a gel containing oxalic acid is a good rust remover and dissolves the rust. It is available under different names from any place that sells automotive stuff. That is almost certainly overkill in this case though. OTOH if you have an old bike with deep rust this stuff works wonders.

I would leave the rust and just oil it before I would use an abrasive even a mild one like scotchbrite pads. That just does more damage. The strongest abrasive I would ever consider would be rubbing compound used to buff car paint.