Yeah, I went through a few days of communications with the support team and ended up confirming that it was the webcam ribbon cable that runs behind the screen and joins into that fabric-wrapped cable + connector.
Unfortunately, I only noticed/reported this issue one and a half months past the warranty period, so the only advice they had was to buy an entire top cover replacement for ~$90. There’s unfortunately no webcam cable alone that can be bought from the store, and the reasoning was:
…we do not sell the webcam cable separately, as it is preinstalled and securely fastened to the Top Cover. Removing or replacing it could lead to issues such as electrical shorts or further damage to the display assembly.
Kind of a bummer, considering that from my understanding the cable is just adhered to the back with some double-sided adhesive, and silly as it is, I have slapped a bunch of stickers on the back case that I’d rather not have to transfer or lose by replacing the cosmetically/structurally intact case itself.
The biggest kicker is that this is a nearly $100 surprise expense if I decided to properly fix this (and I don’t want to experiment with removing and swapping the cables when the Top Case is that expensive), so I’ve settled for just making sure I have some earbuds with a mic with my laptop at all times.
So yeah, unfortunately there isn’t really a cost-effective solution at the moment. I’d like to think that if this can be established as a common enough failure that maybe Framework would be convinced to offer a better solution for this issue.