When #Facebook bought #Whatsapp they promised never to cross the streams, link the accounts, suck up the whatsapp-data into their Facebook Data-Mills.
And this month they're breaking the promise and asking everyone to agree to let the cross the streams after all.
Your WhatsApp App has probably already asked you. Maybe you already agreed without thinking.
As part of the Leave-Facebbok plan, I intended to leave Whatsapp at some point anyway. That date is moved earlier: I do not intend to agree to Whatsapp's new terms.
They will delete my account. I will be glad.
Sorry to anyone left behind, but you don't need to be.
You should really install https://www.signal.org/ - it's owned by a charity with a privacy mission so can't just be bought by Facebook or Google or whoever, and is run and founded by Moxie, a cypher-punk open-source lead that used to work at Mozilla.
I haven't deleted Telegram yet, but I consider that deprecated too frankly. It doesn't encrypt groups at all and doesn't encrypt private messages by default.
@pre Bravo! I left WhatsApp some time ago and (finally) quit Facebook a few months back.
I use Signal, though did recently find that it doesn't handle "large" groups (I couldn't respond to a texting thread with 14 others in), which was frustrating. I just heard about Element (formerly Riot), which is highly regarded for its encryption as well but can also handle large(r?) texting groups. I'll be taking it for a spin shortly.
Server run by the main developers of the project 
It is not focused on any particular niche interest - everyone is welcome as long as you follow our code of conduct!
@reay Element is great, but I think it unlikely to get the kinda group-consensus you need for the schelling-point.
Too many people won't be able to understand the distributed-nature if it. Picking a server. Understanding handles/usernames.
So I just mention Signal in the headline at least. It's good enough and simple enough for my mum.
I've got a Signal chat with about 16 people in it, haven't noticed any issues. There's more expected in that group eventually so hope there's no a hard limit around that number certainly. Haven't hit it yet.