I'm in the EU. WhatsApp showed me a screen about new term of service right now. There were two buttons, Agree and Not Now. I tapped Not Now, it kept working.
GDPR allows processing of data under various legal bases. They use consent (opt-in) only for things like accessing your camera. For sharing data with other Facebook services, they rely on a "legitimate interest" (opt-out) instead. In theory, you might be able to object to processing under a legitimate interest, but they make it rather cumbersome. Which processing activities they perform under which legal basis is actually well-explained in the privacy policy, if you manage to find the correct section (it has a rather labyrinthine structure).