In the past I've used microsnitch on macos which tells you when the mic or camera are activated, but macos seems to have support for this baked into the os now. In zoom calls the menu bar shows what is active. If this can be sidestepped and avoided in software, and the camera can be activated without any indicator, I do not know. If direct access can be done, and you don't need to go through some apple api to hit the camera, maybe.
edit: looks easily bypassed https://github.com/cormiertyshawn895/RecordingIndicatorUtili...
Using this tool requires disabling SIP, so not "easily bypassed" at least from a malware perspective.
Did it ever snitch on anything interesting?
idk, but maybe you know! it was probably easily bypassed anyway. hardware disconnects are the only thing that can ever be trusted imo