I would say my claim is that when you remove pixels, what you see in their place instead is in fact black, an absence of emitted light. There’s no functional difference at any moment between a missing pixel and a black pixel if we only distinguish them by how much light they emit, which, in this case, is none for both. I’d also expect this to be what happens with a real monitor/screen in the dark (although maybe there’s something non-black behind the pixels; we could assume the lights are transparent).
I would say my claim is that when you remove pixels, what you see in their place instead is in fact black, an absence of emitted light. There’s no functional difference at any moment between a missing pixel and a black pixel if we only distinguish them by how much light they emit, which, in this case, is none for both. I’d also expect this to be what happens with a real monitor/screen in the dark (although maybe there’s something non-black behind the pixels; we could assume the lights are transparent).