> I can imagine lots of people calling customer service "Q: why doesn't my camera work?", "A: Did you open the cover?"

In some over-engineered world, when the camera cover is engaged the webcam video feed would be replaced by an image of the text "Slide camera cover open" (in the user's language) and an animation showing the user how to do so.

We have that on the most recent generation of Framework Laptop. When the hardware privacy switch is engaged, the image sensor is electrically powered off and the camera controller feeds a dummy frame with an illustration of the switch.

This doesn’t seem that wild to me. Zoom already prompts me to unmute my microphone when I cough.