@Arcaik @danielinux @mmu_man The point was not about hijacking Telegram's infrastructure, the point was about hijacking Telegram's features.
For example, Russia tried to block Telegram a couple of years ago. Everybody just started using proxy servers and VPNs just because Telegram is so convenient, that it made sense to tolerate the inconvenience of block evasion.
Government tried to promote some affiliated messengers (e.g. TamTam: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%BC ), but they were extremely crappy because the government and its affiliated companies are just so incompetent, and nobody started using them.
In the end, the government had to give up and unblock Telegram 2 years later.
But if government would start its own Telegram clone back then, even if it was 100% surveilled (modifying client and server code to remove all and any encryption, which is much easier than creating your own messenger from scratch)? A lot of people would probably start using it, because they don't care much about surveillance. And other would have to follow because of the network effects.