Indeed, there is an option in the settings that will not download any media unless you authorize it. It also creates its own media gallery, which you can periodically delete photos from. In this regard it's not much different from other messaging apps, but yeah absolutely tick that permission off. If you use it for work in group chats you are probably getting flooded with work related photos that aren't even addressed to you, as it happened to me.

Another one you may find useful is removing the automatic backups to cloud. They pretty much brick your phone at 2am or whenever the hell it chooses to do it.

My dad was complaining about the storage space being full on his phone so I checked it. Turns out Whatsapp saves every single photo and video to your device. There should be a setting that makes it so that it downloads only if you choose so. Enable that setting and then delete all the pics and videos downloaded via Whatsapp.

Truly a garbage app. Annoying as hell, when it comes to storage.