What it wasn't
After 1800 posts is a lot of certainty by posters had emerged, yet the current set of posted conclusions are significantly divided in direct opposition. A lot of certainty is going to eventually be proven wrong. What we do know so far as possibilities, though less so as probabilities:
The ‘event’ may have been of long (20+ seconds) or short (3 seconds) duration.
Primary cause may or may not have been an onboard explosion, missile strike, mechanical failure, or fatigue failure.
Explosion may or may not have been a bomb, missile, battery+, or other, and may not have, by itself, been sufficient to cause the results, meaning more than one item combined to produce an explosive effect, intentionally or by happenstance.
An intentional 'bomb'-- pyro or non pyro—may have been loaded by happenstance, or placed very intentionally at a very specific location for a very specific reason.
A fire in the aft hold so far cannot be ruled out as primary or located with certainty in the event sequence.
HS failure, tail section parting, aft fuselage parting, and any of the three HS support points may each have been primary in sequence.
HS shearing off may have been up, or down, or multiple ups and downs of high or low frequency….and the HS or support structure may have been previously compromised by chemical or mechanical action.
Loss of any of the three HS support points dooms the airframe and frees the HS to large movements in response to both positive and negative loads. The range of possible sequences of resulting actions of the loss of one of the HS pivots in an AC departing normal flight attitudes have not yet been argued and there is as yet no consensus.
It is generally deemed to be in the best interests of the public and of the investigation that the public including Pprune should not know all that is known.
Of note:
Engine pylons are weaker against abrupt yaw than abrupt pitch loads.
Maximum accelerations in pitch or yaw by an intact airframe will be lower than accelerations by an incomplete airframe.
A missile strike does not always result in a warhead explosion. Especially if the warhead explosive has been removed.
“Smoke” in the video may have been added not to enhance an effect but to obscure something, like the absence of smoke, or to misdirect from something else. If you can refrain from laughing, ask why that might be done. One reason might an absence of explosive fingerprint.
The list or people, organizations, political entities, government agencies, and governments who/which for a wide variety of perhaps extremely bizarre reasons known only to themselves might want to “down” a very specific or just some random airliner to leverage some very large political rock is very very long, with most of them probably thinking in terms of a false flag operation rather than advertising their name.